This is the third blog post in a series of blog posts about open source Content Management Systems (CMS). You can find the first two parts here (Part 1) and here (Part 2) .

In the last article in this series we covered Xoops, Seotoaster, e107, Concrete5, and Typo3, five leading Content Management Systems. In this article we talk about the next five: MediaWiki, Moveable Type, dotCMS, Dotclear, and Zope/Plone.

11. Media Wiki

MediaWiki is a PHP designed open source software wiki package, initially built for use on Wikipedia. Now it is used by several other projects of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation and by many other wikis, including this website, the home of MediaWiki. The free software is available under the license of the GPL. It runson a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) architecture. It’s designed to run on large server farms for websites that get millions of hits per day.

Advantages include:

Scalability: It is scalable and powerful, with many features not commonly found in Wiki systems

MediaWiki supports a multiple server environment allowing it to scale up for high usage situations such as massive collaborations

Powerful and robust, MediaWiki is capable of handling hundreds of millions of pages

Multiple users can simultaneously update, modify and edit pages on the CMS which is designed for a collaborative environment

12. Movable Type

Movable Type is a free, all-in-one content management system that helps in building and operating an eCommerce site and creating a social networking site. It also lets developers manage large volumes of content and run a blog, while also functioning as an intranet. This content management system has gained popularity in various circles including media and publishing companies, design and development firms, power bloggers and marketing and communications folks.

Advantages include:

Managing your website with Movable Type is quite easy through the administrator interface

With one installment, one can manage multiple websites/blogs

It is scalable. As your site grows, the platform scales to meet fluctuating traffic needs

It is quick and easy to make new templates and requires very little technical knowledge using the built-in tools

It’s easy to publish content in either entry or page form and add custom fields as you go

Optional support for bloggers, online support for businesses and premium support for enterprise and high-traffic bloggers

It supports multiple users, themes, comments and tagging

Disadvantages include:

It takes longest time to install in comparison to other CMS

Active community is significantly smaller than more popular content management systems

13. DotCMS

DotCMS is an enterprise-grade open source J2EE/Java Web Content Management System. It is used for controlling websites and managing content such as media, modules, text and other add-ons. Users with moderate or no technical ability can make massive changes on a site while working on dotCMS. The combination of open source and Java Script makes it sophisticated, innovative and customizable. Intended to serve CMS-driven e-commerce, it allows corporations, institutions and organizations to move at a quicker pace without the need for Java development talent within a Web Team. Some of the organizations that run on dotCMS Enterprise Edition are Toyota, Hospital Corporation of America, University of Texas, Thomson Reuters, Aquent, State of Ohio, and the Government of Quebec.

Advantages include:

It offers a certified and warranted Enterprise solution in addition to a Community version

Using dotCMS, clients with little or no technical knowledge can manage an open source portal, company web site, or intranet application

It is suitable for a document management application, or an information portal of any type

dotCMS enables the marketing department to tag, segment and group site visitors by any number of criteria. For example by the pages they visit, the time of their last visit, their demographic information and any of their indicated interests

Disadvantages include:

Unlike other open source CMS, dotCMS requires one to have root access to the server for installation of things like Apache Tomcat

14. Dotclear

Dotclear is a French open source CMS under the GNU General Public License. It is a blogging platform available in English. Developers can create multiple blogs with one installation. The open-source web publishing software offers a very user-friendly backend. Anyone with little technical knowledge can publish on the web using Dotclear, a user-friendly tool.

Advantages include:

Easy publication

Package engine allows 1-click install for plug-ins and themes

Fully customizable theme

User-friendly administration

Low requirements (PHP4/MySQL4) help to minimize hosting dependencies

Flexible comment system

Performance and scalability

Huge number of available plug-ins

Disadvantages include:

Single-site only

Rudimentary security features

Not suitable for large enterprise projects

Very limited assets manager

15. Zope/Plone

Plone is an open source and web CMS that is based on the Zope application server, which uses the Python language. This is unique in a world filled with PHP applications. It is famous among developers as an intranet, portal, web site or community site. It helps them to manage all sorts of content, organized into folders that can be uploaded by a community of users.

Advantages include:

Far less vulnerability than PHP-based systems

Extremely extensible and flexible

Wide range of 3rd-party products to deal with off-norm use-cases

Extraordinarily helpful community

Excellent i18N support

Scalability: Plone scales to enterprise levels

World-wide availability of professional trainers and consultants

More secure than systems like Drupal and Joomla

Disadvantages include:

Requires knowledge of Zope and Python

Not very user friendly for non-technical users

Plone’s CMS niche is often confused with other, less powerful OSS CMS due to its operation at the confluence of web content management, social S/W & collaboration, and enterprise portals

About Ralph Eck

Ralph is an international businessman with a wealth of experience in developing; telecommunications, data transmission, CATV and internet companies. His experience and expertise positions him uniquely in being able to; analyze, evaluate and critique technology and how it fits into a business’ operational needs while supporting its’ success.